Nigerian soul with a European groove

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Image 1 of 2

Yearning and rage: Nneka has a distinctive voice

Tom Horan

12:01AM BST 28 Oct 2006

Singer Nneka tells Tom Horan how she found unlikely acclaim in Hamburg

It's a long bus-ride from Hamburg to Paris. And it's a whole lot more of a journey from Nigeria to Germany. But this is the route that has brought Nneka Egbuna from an oil-rich town in west Africa to a club in the Parisian district of Belleville.

Shy at first, as she slowly opens up before the crowd the striking young singer begins to sound like that long journey. There's something in her voice that is 10,000 miles from home.

You won't find many Nigerian soul singers in Hamburg. The great Hanseatic sea-port, where she now lives, may be a more diverse city than many in Germany, but black faces are still rare. In one way, this has helped Nneka (pronounced like "neckerchief"), as she explains in her dressing-room after the Paris show. "The fact that they see me as somebody in Germany I found very shocking. Back home in Nigeria it's: 'OK, you sing. Anybody can sing. So what?' "

But Nneka is a little disingenuous about her vocal talent. Backed by a small, compact band and her producer Farhot, her delivery has a particular intensity to it. It summons up a sense of longing, a feeling of displacement. I wonder how she first found coming to live in Germany. "The cultural differences are extreme," she says. "The way they dress, the way they carry themselves, their religion. So many things that are important to me are not important to them. For two years I was overwhelmed."

Although she spent the first 19 years of her life in another port, the petro-chemical centre of Warri, Nneka does have a connection to Europe through her mother, who is half-German. But it is her father, a former architect turned poultry farmer, whom she talks most about.

"I miss my dad," she says. "I went home three months ago for his 71st birthday and he insisted on playing everyone my record. All his friends were gathered in the parlour - in the sitting-room - and I said, Daddy, I don't want to be the centre of attraction, it's your day. But he put it in his CD player, and he was saying, 'Oh, this is great. You need to come here and do a show in Nigeria.' So he's trying to help me to get the documentation you need. It's a difficult place to organise things."

The album that rocked the parlour is The Uncomfortable Truth, the 25-year-old's debut, recently released on the small Yomama label. It's certainly not a record that sounds remotely African. Rather it's a curious distillation of the black experience through the musical sensibilities of continental Europe. There's more than a dash of Bob Marley in there; some of the 1990s nu-soul stylings of Erykah Badu; a flavour of 1980s pop rapper Neneh Cherry. What holds it all together is the emotional focus – somewhere between yearning and rage – of Nneka's voice. Strange, then, that she was once on course to be an accountant.

"My father is a very strict man," she says, "and he brought us up in a very disciplined way. I was a very conscientious student. I did well in my A- and O-levels back home, and applied to study economics and accountancy at university. But then something happened – I can't talk about it – and I made the decision to move to Germany." Now Nneka is enroled at Hamburg university, studying anthropology. "By the grace of god I'll be finished in a year's time. When I've finished, I want to give myself to music 100 per cent. But I need an alternative if this doesn't work out."

In the ruthless world of British music, where the impression of being ready to die for your art is the key to credibility, Nneka's way of hedging her bets would be scorned. But continental Europe has a more tolerant outlook. Musicians are not derided for being behind the times. Audiences are much more easy-going and open-minded. The Paris crowd epitomised this attitude, starting the kind of clap-alongs that are frowned upon over here and celebrating Nneka's performance in a very uncritical way.

And maybe that Euro-gentleness is a positive force. With grooves that owe a huge debt to Massive Attack, The Uncomfortable Truth is far from cutting edge. But then Massive Attack made a fantastic noise, and their kind of sound is a perfect platform for Nneka's distinctive voice. Her music does not strive to change the world, but merely asks to be judged on it's own terms.

"My heart's desire is to be recognised in Nigeria," she says, "I don't want to be a big star. I just want to get my message across."